Aharen-san wa Hakarenai Season 2

Episode 4

Raido belongs on every list of all time best anime boyfriends. His love and supportiveness for Aharen in all things she either does or Raido imagines she does knows no bounds. A testament to that is his going gyaru, even if only for a day—and I have no doubt he would've continued doing it if Aharen herself wanted to keep up her gyaru look as well. We should all be so lucky as to find ourselves someone who will cheer us on and embrace us in all that we do or even try to the extent that Raido does Aharen, even though it leaves him looking vaguely like a stylized Spongebob gijinka.

That said, as fun as that bit was, my favorite moment of the episode was Raido and Aharen getting into PriPla. Unless this anime takes place a lot earlier than I think, Raido shouldn't be old enough to remember much (if anything) about a world before the advent of the smartphone, and yet his aesthetic sensibilities are lodged firmly in the 90s. And I love that. His characters are rocking the ginormous, quintessentially kawaii eyes, and Gakuen Handsome chins. It's the kind of anime that someone who doesn't watch anime sees in their mind's eye when you ask them to envision what anime looks like. I only wish we could've seen more of the outfits he worked so painstakingly to earn. We got a taste of his fashion sense, sure—and make no mistake, the precious few outfits we saw are wonderful in being so comparable to the kind of over-the-top, frill-loaded ensemble you'd see Card Captor Sakura wearing. But that only makes me want to see the full course all the more, since I have no doubt it would've been a gloriously Y2K-magical-girl-ian.

In any case, Raido's visual taste aside, there is no pain quite like getting really invested into a game (especially if that's in the literal financial sense, as it is with Raido here) only for service to be cut, or for it to otherwise be made inaccessible. Admittedly, I haven't played too many gacha games in my time, but even among the few I have played I've been hesitant to put money into them, and the omnipresent fear of service suddenly ending or being otherwise unable to access my account is pretty high on the list of reasons why that is. It's a lesson I—not unlike Raido—learned the hard way. But in my case, it's one that I was forced to learn back in my Gaia Online days. Not a terribly unusual experience for the early and mid 2000s users, my account got hacked and I lost everything in the blink of an eye. I was a pretty active user, and while I wouldn't call myself Gaia-Wealthy, I had poured as much effort as my adolescent self possibly could've into saving up for the items I wanted. This was before Gaia Cash entered the in-site economy (but that's a whole other can of worms), so it was a slow grind, but it was honest work. And it all went up in pixelated smoke. Nearly 20 years later, and I'm still bitter about it.

The last bit about the Aharen siblings becoming idols, even if for only one event, was the weakest of the three, but there's still fun to be had with hitting the audience with the no-mix-up-mix-up. At this point, we the audience are trained to see how wildly off the rails Raido's imagination can get, so it's not worth taking him too seriously. And it worked! I found myself wondering what Aharen could possibly be working on, if not miscellaneous idol-related stuff. Because surely it couldn't be that, right? It's simply too obvious! And yet, a broken clock is still right twice a day, so this was a fun way to catch people off guard and shake things up.

This week's episode has left me feeling vaguely nostalgic for Gaia Online, and hungry for more Raido and Aharen antics; nothing if not an indicator of another strong episode. Probably the best one we've had yet, which says something because that Animal Crossing/Like a Dragon episode a few weeks ago was another really funny one. The comedy in this series is so unique unto itself, and episodes like this one flex that muscle to its fullest.

Rating:

Aharen-san wa Hakarenai is currently streaming on Crunchyroll on Mondays.